Brain Spice

I’ve been asked a number of times now where the name “Brain Spice” came from. Actually the name hit me while I was fiddling with a salt shaker, waiting for Sunday lunch at Bunbury's wonderful Noovoh restaurant!

We were already considering a shop at that stage. Christine and I wanted to combine our respective passions - teaching and science - in a fun way, to create something that felt both interesting and unique. We had talked about it, but it was an enormous decision to finally make. And yet, it also seemed like the right time, and exactly the right thing to do. Ideas sometimes seem to take on a life of their own. Scary things, ideas.

Teaching and science. Our shop name needed to somehow tie these things together. What was common ground between teaching and science? The answer, of course, is knowledge and learning - whether by instruction and practice, or by exploration, experiment and discovery - and preferably by all of the above.

And this is where all that passion kicks in, because learning - in all its forms - is surely one of the greatest joys in life! In essence, that is what we want Brain Spice to be about: learning - exploration - discovery - fun! And perhaps most importantly of all, to encourage a natural sense of wonder at the amazingly subtle, infinitely surprising, and incredibly beautiful universe in which we live.

The name, when it hit me, made me laugh out loud. And that seemed perfectly appropriate!

(There is a downside to our shop name. I get called "Brian" a lot, and occasionally, "Mr Spice". And to all of the Spice families of Bunbury: sorry about that. :-| )